Artemisia Gentileschi’s Lucretia Stars at Dorotheum

The Art Newspaper has Dorotheum’s early release of an intriguing lot for its October Old Master sale. A re-discovered work by Artemisia Gentileschi that has never been auctioned before will be offered with an estimate at between €500-700k. By comparison, a Gentileschi self portrait was offered at Drouot last year with a €300-400k estimate. It sold for €2.3m to dealers Robilant + Voena who subsequently re-sold it to the National Gallery in London for £3.6m (€3.97m) or a 73% gain.

The 2016-17 exhibition, Artemisia Gentileschi and Her Times, at the Museo di Roma […] Lucretia was included in the exhibition’s catalogue by Nicola Spinosa in 2015, and in 2016, when he published it in the catalogue of the Gentileschi show in Palazzo Braschi, Rome. […]

There has been a lot of confusion over the attribution of her work but both Nicola Spinosa and Riccardo Lattuada, who has examined the work in Vienna, are as convinced as we are that this painting is by her”, says MacDonnell, who has been working on the painting for six months. (The art historian Wolfgang Prohaska has also agreed with the attribution).